Tuesday, July 03, 2007

And the swallow a nest...Psalm 84:3

Updated at the bottom.

Yuck! What is that?
Right above our front door! I'm glad we haven't got the second coat of paint on that part of the house yet. I begged The Man to remove the mud from the house. He didn't want to.
"Please, before they spend any more time on their nest."

Then The Man said the words that he knew would convince me to just leave it alone...

"You can blog it!"


Now, you may not think that watching mud dry is very exciting, but sometimes you need to get your thrills where you can.
There. Almost done.Ta da!
Two little barn sparrow eggs.
Oh, wait...FOUR little barn sparrow eggs.
I did have concerns about these birds. They have absolutely no fear of us. That does make for good observation, but considering that the nest is right above the door and Mr. Swallow hangs out on the front porch light, I am a bit wary about them deciding to come inside. Especially since that door is opened (and sometimes closed) about 6000 (give or take) times a day. So far they have decided to stay outside.
I'm not going to apologize for taking so many pictures of this nest and eggs. They knew perfectly well that humans were going to be in and out that door all day long. If the barn swallows didn't want us observing them they should have chosen another place to build their nest. Like, maybe, hmmm...the barn.

Update added July 5:
We have baby birds! Yesterday morning I noticed specks of something on our welcome mat. Closer examination showed that they could be bits of eggshell. Another peek in the nest revealed two baby birds.

Later, I could not get a non-blurry picture with just the camera up against the porch roof so I resorted to using a mirror.
Three babies and one egg left.

This morning I went out again to check the nest. It looks like the eggs have all hatched now. I didn't get a good picture since the normally passive mother turned into a very angry bird. I might fly around in circles and make a lot of noise if someone was trying to snap pictures of my babies in their bed. Oh. I feel like a paparazzo.
I'll leave them alone for a few days. That shouldn't be too hard for me since we're going camping. We will be back on Sunday. I'll try to get more pictures then.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

OOOOhhhh the eggs are so dainty and cute!

VJ said...

Those are good pictures. I don't think I've ever seen barn swallow eggs before. You must live in a more rural area for barn swallows to be flying around.

Oh by the way, I'm glad to make your acquaintance. I'm an SDA and live in the Midwest, though I grew up around Puget Sound.

I hope you can stop by my place sometime.